It’s hard to talk about this year’s Boston Marathon without thinking back to my first time running here, in 2005. It was 6 weeks after my first ever Ironman, and not wanting to pass on the significant honor of qualifying, I convinced myself that my body was recovered and ready to run. My body, in fact, was ready to walk, and I dragged my sorry self to my slowest marathon finish to date.
Given that I walked much of the race that year, I didn’t really remember Boston as a particularly challenging course. I came into the race this weekend with a goal of bettering my marathon PR (3:36) and of even cracking the elusive 3:30 barrier. Random snippets of conversation, “expect slower times” and “not a PR course” floated in and out of my ears as I traversed the expo crowds prior to race day. I dismissed them as inapplicable to me and focused instead on what was shaping up to be perfect weather conditions and the foreboding I felt inside for a perfect personal performance.
Back in 2005 the marathon still started at noon and the athletes were bussed in 4-5 hours early to wait, huddled together by the thousands on whatever tiny patch of ground we could claim under the tents of the Athlete’s Village, like some bizarro-world refugee camp for uber-fit people. This year was a totally different experience for me, both because the race start has been moved up 2 hours and because my dear friend and fellow runner Liz arranged a ride for us with her wonderful mom and boyfriend. We did still have to shuttle a short distance in from a drop-off point, which was excruciatingly slow. The bus line exiting the freeway was at a dead standstill due to several busloads of desperate passengers and drivers running off into the bushes to heed nature’s call. After much cajoling we finally convinced our driver (new to the job and with her boss driving the bus directly behind us) to pull a renegade maneuver and pop out of line into the oncoming traffic of the next lane, leap frog ahead and effectively cut 20 or so minutes off our wait. Her boss immediately followed suit and our entire bus went crazy with cheers and promises of a promotion for our hero driver.
Liz and I never even set foot inside the Athlete’s Village. We waited in another painfully slow line for a porta-potty, and by the time we’d taken care of business and dropped our gear bags at the appropriate buses it was time to head to the starting corrals.
In Boston, your race number is assigned according to your qualifying time, and you line up in a corral of similarly paced athletes. With the new start times there are also two waves, one beginning at 10:00 and the second at 10:30. I felt extremely fortunate to be in the very front of the second wave (basically the fastest of the slow folks!) with clear open road ahead of me as opposed to the usual undulating crowd of Boston runners as far as the eye can see. My position also allowed me to avoid the worst of the “cup carpet”, the thousands of sticky, slippery crushed drink cups from the aid stations that increase exponentially the further back in the pack you are seeded. Not only did I feel like a superstar, I also dressed the part. With my new Team Zoot GU tri top, matching Zoot shoes, a little black SkirtSports running skirt and GU visor I felt like SuperGirl at the start line. My prime position was perfect, I was all dolled up and ready for a great day.
Of course, with the leading spot in a race also comes the pressure to stay there. That excitement, combined with the early downhill of the course made it near impossible to reign in a reasonable pace. One of the core bits of knowledge of any runner is the understanding that going out too fast spells near certain disaster. The goal is always to achieve the more strategic and significantly more elusive negative split. But what happens when you feel superhuman, the miles are flying by freakishly fast, you’re toward the front of the pack and you have a certain sense that you can hold on, that maybe this is your day, the day it all comes together and your pace and performance is amped that extra amount to carry you through to a crushing personal victory? It definitely could happen.
I watched the miles go by at 7:45, 7:45, 7:30 (Whoops, ok, try and slow it down), 7:40, etc. Then somewhere around mile 10 or 11 I started hitting 8:15-8:20’s (Ok, this averages out the earlier speed. I need a solid 8:00 minute pace to hit 3:30. Nothing to worry about.) I crossed the 13 mile mark at exactly 1:44, right on target but with no room to mess around. I hoped I could stay in the 8:00 minute groove, slowing just a little through the Newton hills and gaining back what I lost through the final downhill stretch to the finish.
Then I hit the point in almost every marathon I’ve ever run where a few minutes strangely disappear, my pace slows almost imperceptibly in my body but very noticeably on the clock. It’s the point where I let go of clocking each mile and try to focus on running what I feel, dealing with the knowledge that my most sought after goal may not be attainable that day, but immediately backing it up with a secondary plan with which I can make peace. So I won’t break 3:30, at least if I can keep it together I’ll likely set a new PR. Maybe that’s better for me anyway, maybe breaking 3:30 would have left me with no new marathon goal on the horizon.
But then a few more minutes slipped into the void and I knew the PR was gone. I wasn’t about to let myself fall off any further, and felt pretty secure in the fact that, barring any crippling cramps I would at least hit my 2nd best marathon time. Even though by this time I was feeling every painful stride reverberate through my aching destroyed-by-downhill quads, I turned up the smile on my face and allowed myself to enjoy the roaring (and excessively drunk) crowds, slapped the outstretched hands of the kids lining the course, soaked in the wonder and magnitude that is the Boston Marathon and finished in a respectable 3:42. Whew! A runner up to my own PR and a requalification by 8 minutes. And now I know where to go to break 3:30 – somewhere flat and fast like Chicago or Sacramento.